


In Anger

by recrudescence



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-09
Updated: 2010-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:23:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House is off his game. Co-starring Egypt, nachos, and a ten-year-old's wrath.</p><p><b>Spoilers:</b> Through the Tritter arc; takes place during One Day, One Room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Anger

**Author's Note:**

> : A follow-up to [Postern](http://open-24-hrs.livejournal.com/3657.html#cutid1) (drive-by summary: dub-con roughsex, post-Words and Deeds), written as part of the [](http://community.livejournal.com/rsl_bday_drive/profile)[**rsl_bday_drive**](http://community.livejournal.com/rsl_bday_drive/). Yes, RSL's birthday was February 28. Oops.

Wilson hasn't been meeting his eyes.

It still hurts to sit down, even though it doesn't hurt to look at him; there's no fight for the upper hand there. House is perversely pleased about that.

He's been thinking about it. Considering just walking into Wilson's office and kissing him without a word, then walking right back out again. Judas betrayed. Make him wonder, make him even more uncomfortable. Knowing Wilson, he's probably marinating in guilt, which is only fair. Probably spending every second hoping for some kind of acknowledgement, if not an outright confrontation. House doesn't give it to him, gives every appearance that he can't be bothered. Just to be contrary.

He'd made some friends in Egypt when he was younger, non-military kids who were actually _from_ there instead of just _living_ there. One of them, Mohamed—a few years older, with a wide white smile and his _galabayya_ rippling in the breeze. Greg was only ten, and he had wanted one. He wanted to be one of the locals, blend in, a losing battle and a retrospective irony. His father wouldn't let him. Tons of people off the base wore them, he'd argued, and _he_ didn't care that it looked like a dress, so what was the problem? They had to wear shirts and trousers to school anyway, his father had said, and that had been the end of it.

Instead of fighting the issue, he'd found other ways. Making a habit of linking arms with the local boys, the ones who didn't think it was weird because it was nothing but normal for them. Where _insha'allah_ and _al'humdallah_ punctuated every other sentence and it wasn't unusual for boys his own age to cup each other's faces in suntanned hands and kiss cheeks in public. He went native as much as he could just to spite his father. He does the same with Wilson now, acting the same as always because he's dead sure of how deeply Wilson wishes he wouldn't.

He'd like it better if he could feel triumphant about it.

Wilson doesn't apologize, doesn't even look repentant. Whatever finally made something spring loose in his head, sending him over the edge, it's receded completely. House watches, taking inventory anew with every glance, trying to make out a trace of it. Nothing.

Only a few days ago, blood on his tongue, shirt tangled around his wrists; facedown and bruised like some battered child bride who didn't know how love was supposed to feel. He still isn't convinced Wilson honestly did it all for his own good. No one can be that delusional, and he's sure that he's seen more evidence than _anyone_ of how self-centered Wilson can be when the stars and circumstances align.

The trouble is, he can't feel triumphant about that either. Confusing intimacy for affection—Wilson dutifully keeping an eye on him at all times, to make House feel better or to make himself feel better? He doesn't know anymore.

Conflating caring with violence, talking to House in his own idiom until the point was made, filed, and stabbed swiftly home. Stinging and lingering for days. He supposes anyone could shrug it off with a smile and say it was all a side effect of Wilson hanging around _him_ too much.

"Are we role-playing?" Conversation is strained, a little too much levity. "Am I you?" Wilson goes, a thread of mirth stretched too-tautly through the query. "I don't want to be you." Most days, he doesn't want to be him either, but that's just too obvious to say out loud.

Egyptian drivers had excited him. Like a game of Tetris, he would think years later; diving into the first available space. He loved taking trips into town, getting to experience it all. For the most part, all he got was the international military school, five days a week of cool-eyed kids who'd grown up everywhere and grown bored with it all. They didn't care about exploring, learning to curse in Arabic, the difference between _fusha_ and colloquial, the glass cases at the museum where he'd stared at the shabby descriptions typed crookedly in three different languages and practically pressed his nose to the glass. He wondered if he would be like them when he was older, if he would get tired of the world. Schools were the same everywhere on earth, maybe, but he could always find something to keep him occupied. That would never be a problem, he'd been one hundred percent sure of it.

He's off his game. The patient is a whiny brat who wants nothing more than to spill her guts, and not even in a medically interesting way. He ends up sullenly sitting by her bed, talking it out to make sure that Eve, blond and pure and pregnant, goes home happy. Or as happy as possible, all things considered. To keep her satisfied, he goes the whole nine yards, spinning some cockamamie story about his grandmother—no, wait, his _dad_—making him bathe in ice and sleep in the yard. The kinds of things he willingly tried to inflict on himself when he didn't want to be in the same building as his father—stubbornly sitting in the bathtub until his mother could coax him out, stubbornly throwing a sleeping bag in their postage stamp of a front yard until his mother could coax him back in. Gradually bringing him around and stepping in to stop the self-destruction for another few hours.

It's the kind of story that would make Wilson cream his khakis in a fit of psychoanalytical glee.

He doesn't have any desire to do that again, and he doesn't know what it means that things had to come to this as opposed to some other kind of confrontation. Wondering, then trying not to, whether Wilson's wanted him all along or if it just happened to happen, some manifestation of violence biting down on itself and smoothing into sex. Some perverted logic that would let Wilson reassure himself later he hadn't actually done any harm. He almost wishes Wilson had just punched him to a pulp and been done with it.

His mother would be calm, those times when he made things difficult. "Greg, how can you be proud of yourself if you go on acting like this?" No yelling, no anger, just sadness and sympathy and disappointment, enough of it all to transfer and make him feel even worse. His father was the one who had tried to scare it into him. He sort of misses the old brand of animosity, back when the biggest injustice had been his dad not wanting his only son wearing what he equated to a dress, even though that had just made Greg want to do it more. Almost forty years in the future, he hasn't changed much at all where it matters, but at least he's aware of it.

When he leaves for the day, he's craving nachos and resolution, so he stops by to tell Wilson, intending on divulging the former only.

Before he's finished the sentence, Wilson is frowning. "You think we can get dinner and a movie and just patch everything up?"

"Sure. Because I _need_ you and you get off on that." The retort comes out automatically. As he watches, Wilson's gaze drops to the floor for a split-second. _Good_.

"You destroyed my practice, my credit, and our friendship, and I'm the cruel one. That makes _perfect_ sense." White fingertips clattering over a black keyboard. Wilson doesn't look up again.

He goes home alone. Has a drink, has a pill, stares blankly at a book for fifteen minutes without turning a page. He could take more: have another drink, another pill, and see if Wilson comes by after all. But he might not be willing to check on him anymore. Wilson's left him before, and there's no stopping any traitorous thoughts in that vein from floating to mind. Wilson knows exactly what he's doing, just how far to twist the knife now that it's in place.

They'd had writing prompts once a week, at the school on base. Take one minute and write every single association they could think of. _Red_, it would be one week. _Land and sea_, another. He'd written his lists in as many different languages as he'd known, searching for the first relevant words and flipping through multiple mental dictionaries at once for the translation. One of them had been _things I think are beautiful_. He'd stayed up late the night before and fallen asleep on his paper; nothing on the page but his name and the date when it came time to pass them in. It comes floating back through his mind and he still can't think of anything.

He'd apologized once, that time in rehab, and seen Wilson wanting to believe it. Handing him a tie and clearly hoping after House came home there would be actions to back up the words. The same tie lies twisted on the floor of his closet because he can't be bothered to pick it up.

When he was ten, the air in Egypt was hot like cotton candy, like a carnival, sweet with singing and street venders' stalls, and the sand sometimes felt like baby powder under his toes. He'd been smug sometimes, patting himself on the back for not being one of those schoolkids who grew up quickly and never looked back.

The tortilla chips are stale, the pill slides down his throat a little too easily, and the book he's still staring at sucks. He looks back now.


End file.
